Sail Away is a 1972 album by Randy Newman. In 2003, the album was ranked number 321 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The album stands as a prime example of Newman's ability with musical satire. The title track takes the form of a pitch from a slave trader in Africa. "Political Science" foresees America making the world a better place through the nuclear annihilation of almost everyone else. "God's Song" uses gospel forms to question the idea of a benevolent creator. "He Gives Us All His Love" is a bittersweet and sparsely-arranged hymn about religious faith which may be earnest or tongue-in-cheek.

The song "Burn On," a reference to the Cuyahoga River fire near Cleveland in 1969, was used in the introduction to the film Major League.

Brian Wilson has said that this album profoundly affected him at the time of its release, briefly keeping him from sliding further into depression and mental illness.


Randall Stuart “Randy” Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an American singer/songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist who is notable for his mordant (and often satirical) pop songs and for his many film scores.

Newman is noted for his practice of writing lyrics from the perspective of a character far removed from Newman's own biography. For example, the 1972 song "Sail Away" is written as a slave trader's sales pitch to attract slaves, while the narrator of "Political Science" is a U.S. nationalist who complains of worldwide ingratitude toward America and proposes a brutally ironic final solution. One of his biggest hits, "Short People" was written from the perspective of "a lunatic" who hates short people. Since the 1980s, Newman has worked mostly as a film composer. His film scores include Ragtime, Awakenings, The Natural, Leatherheads, James and the Giant Peach, Meet the Parents and Seabiscuit. He has scored five Disney-Pixar films: Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc. , Cars and Princess and the Frog. Most recently, he scored Toy Story 3, and is set to return for Cars 2.

He has been singled out for a number of awards by his colleagues, including an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, four Grammy Awards, and the Governor's Award from the Recording Academy. Randy Newman was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2007, Newman was inducted as a Disney Legend.

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